Using my account, I set up two households for my extended family (Home 1 and Home 2), serving two distinct groups of relatives in two different towns. Let’s call it an assisted living type of arrangement, for ease of understanding the context. My Google account is the only user account that is common to both households; no one else has accounts in both homes. I personally need access to the cameras and devices in both locations, but the other family members do not need access to each other’s business across town. In the Google Home app, the two households linked to my account are totally separate. But to my amazement, members of Home 1 who do NOT have accounts in Home 2 are able to call up Home 2 Nest Camera feeds from Home 1 via voice commands. AND THERE ARE NO SETTINGS TO REMEDY THIS INVASION OF PRIVACY ACROSS HOMES! So, despite having the facade of separate household groups for different homes, Google effectively allows non-members of household to “tailgate” through a voice command loophole that allows them to monitor private camera feeds in someone else’s house from a remote location. This kind of indifference to privacy norms in the implementation of a home monitoring system is mind boggling. There are virtually no basic privacy settings between devices and rooms, which is laughable. Anyone in the house can pipe music to your bedroom speakers at 3AM, and there’s no way to stop it. But when there is no privacy EVEN between two distinct households (different networks, different users, separated by miles), what possible sense does that make?
